Т Паркер - The Room of White Fire

Four round tables stood in the middle of the room, each with a tall sign: A — G, H — N, etc. At each table waited an all-white staffer, a small bouquet in a plastic vase, a snack basket, and a plastic tub filled with drinks.

Also a stainless steel case about the size and shape of a shoe box, where, I assumed, the drugs were kept. Psychotropics, sedatives, stimulants, anticonvulsants, antianxiety drugs, mood stabilizers, pain-numbing opioids, and who knew what else. I had been surprised at the number of drugs in Clay Hickman’s formulary. Next to the pill lockers stood inverted stacks of small white cups.

I took a seat under a sunny window, arranged my visitor’s badge to be visible, and watched. Music played softly — rock melodies on synthesizers, lyrics redacted like the last two years on Clay Hickman’s service record. The patients and the staffers carried on polite, familiar conversations, which gave the room a subdued, professional hum. Could have been a convention of pediatric oncologists or funerary wholesalers.

I couldn’t get Paige Hulet’s simulations of truth out of my mind. I wondered what she was hiding. The only solid fact I’d really gotten from her was that she cared deeply for Clay. Fine. But why had she given me a falsified service history? Did she really not know? Why no file notes on Clay’s “rote” details of Ali Air Base? Why no mention of electroconvulsive therapy? I also couldn’t help wondering what, exactly, she meant by saying she’d once been a good dancer. Ready to try again? Well, that was a changeup.

It was strange that all three of the deities here — DeMaris, Hulet, and Spencer — had insisted that I notify him, her, or him first when I’d located the man they all wanted to find. Me. No, me. No, me.

And it was beyond strange that Clay’s soon-to-be-a-celebrity, multimillionaire healer had once been his superior at a black-site prison in Romania.

My brain swimming with bullshit and prevarication, I looked out at the weird opulence of Arcadia’s “med hour,” where fifty-nine ailing pilgrims would soon be downing the powerful drugs that shaped their lives.

Two beefy white-clads stood at ease along each wall, hands folded in front of them and eyes sharp.

Alec DeMaris strode in, packed into a trim brown suit and flanked by two more white-clad orderlies. He seemed to be making an important point. When he saw me, he stopped, dismissed the men, and came over. Sat one chair away.

“Darn, Roland — you’ve got two strikes. One at the Waterfront and another up in Ojai. Don’t tell me we have to double your pay again.”

“That’s okay, Alec. I’m making a fair wage.”

“But what are you doing here in the one place you know Clay Hickman isn’t?”

I looked over at him. “They call this Investigation 101, Alec. You ask questions and sometimes you get surprising answers.”

“Surprise me, then.”

I ignored him instead.

Mostly the partners were entering the room alone. Some talked and pointed and nudged each other. Some raised their chins and strode to their destinies. Most were dressed casually, though there was one Native American woman in beaded buckskin, a tiny old ballerina, and the two young Charger and Padre fans I’d seen before.

“The Jock Brothers,” said DeMaris. “I caught them snorting Ritalin in the toolshed not long ago. I heard them inside — arguing National League versus American League pitching.”

They came in our direction and stopped in front of us.

Charger leaned over and looked at me. From the recess of his helmet stared two curious blue eyes. I saw that the helmet had been signed by Philip Rivers. “Chargers?” he demanded. “Or Padres?”

“You know it,” I said. “Go Bolts. Go Friars.”

“What else is he going to say?” asked DeMaris.

“He’s just checking,” said the one with the Hoffman jersey. His cap looked like a real MLB issue, right down to the red clay ground into the fabric.

“Why don’t you gutterballs go harass someone else?” asked DeMaris.

Hoffman chortled. Rivers stood up straight, chest out, turned to DeMaris. “You may be head of security, but you have no right to treat nobody like anything,” he said.

“Not so sure I’m clear on that, Phil,” said Demaris. “Move along, you two.”

“Nice to meet you,” said Hoffman, offering me his hand. I shook Rivers’s hand, too. Hoffman put out his hand again, so I shook it once more.

“Enjoy the games, gentlemen,” said DeMaris, standing. “You, too, Ford. Get in line. Score yourself some fentanyl if you want to feel like you’re having sex on a cloud while eating a cheeseburger. At least, that’s how I’ve heard it described.”

Edward Frizell from Pasadena — otherwise known as Evan Southern from Alabama — spotted me and took the chair beside me. He wore a light blue seersucker suit, a button-down white shirt, and a regimental tie. In one hand he carried a neatly folded San Diego Union-Tribune . Between the first two fingers of his other hand was a handsome tortoiseshell cigarette holder that matched the frames of his glasses. The cigarette itself, I noted, was candy, with a dab of red dye for an ember. He crossed his legs, rested the paper atop one knee, and drew on the mouthpiece. “Should I conclude that you haven’t found him?”

“I missed him by six hours.” I told him about the Waterfront, Clay’s new friend, his Ojai run.

He pursed his lips. “I suspected he’d seek out female companionship.”

“Why is he so afraid of his parents?”

Evan looked up toward the ceiling, seemed to be scanning it for something specific. Cameras, mics, and drones, I thought. “He dreaded their visits. He would have seizures beginning a week or two before they were to take place.”

“But why ?”

Evan tapped his cigarette, made as if to grind its ashes with his toe. His shoes were pale blue suede wing tips, and his socks were a blue-and-cream argyle pattern, and all of them matched the color of his suit. His eyes were almost exactly the same shade of blue, behind the magnifying lenses of his glasses. “He thinks he failed them in the war. Clay had banked everything on winning that war. Not only our country winning, but he himself. Winning personally. He wanted citations and medals. He wanted to find those WMDs and chemicals, smash Saddam and the terrorists. Clay Hickman, from one of America’s wealthiest families, enlisted in the Air Force and deployed to war with high resolve.” Evan made a fist of his free hand and coughed into it, a soft smoker’s cough. “That’s the truth. And what brings you here?”

“I wanted to see where he got his meds.”

Evan’s gaze roamed the room. “Every once in a while someone panics in here and won’t take their pills. Things can escalate rather quickly. That’s why they have the gorillas watching. You don’t mess with them.”

The music played and the patients and nurses chatted and joked quietly, and the meds went down the hatch with no trouble at all. “Who is Morpheus?” I asked.

“Greek god of dreams, of course.” Again he gestured to the room.

“You mean all these drug-induced dreamers?”

“Well, no,” he whispered, leaning close. “The man at the table, right there. That’s Morpheus.”

I followed Evan’s line of sight to a middle-of-the-room medication station, H — N, presided over by a white-clad man about Clay’s age. He was temporarily alone at the table, tapping something into his computer tablet. When his next partner, an older woman, came to the table, Morpheus set the device aside, rose, and pulled out the chair for her. She wore a black dress, a black funeral hat, and a veil that covered the top half of her face. She smiled and sat.